Accreditation by The Joint Commission leads to greater resident safety

A study published in the May issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety indicates that nursing homes that are voluntarily accredited by The Joint Commission are more focused on resident safety than non-accredited facilities.

Research – partly funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality – on senior-level managers at over 4,000 nursing homes across the United States concluded that Joint Commission accreditation has a beneficial impact on resident safety issues such as staffing, teamwork, training, nonpunitive responses to mistakes, and communication openness.

According to Laura M. Wagner, Ph.D., R.N., an assistant professor at the New York University College of Nursing at the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, “Although there are costs associated with accreditation, these findings suggest that the benefits of voluntary accreditation may ultimately outweigh the extra costs.”